News and AnalysIs for

The Colombian Petroleum Workers Union, USO, always goes for the big targets: Ecopetrol and Pacific Rubiales. Ecopetrol is open to political pressure from the President of the Republic on down. Pacific annoys them perhaps because it is less subject to political pressure which is why the union went to Canada to protest. The union says Ecopetrol workers in Meta will be on strike this week because contractors pay workers below agreed wages.

Counts were down to 32 which 10% above the recent average and just slightly below the long term average. Our 4-week Moving Average incident count was down slightly at 33.5 incidents but the 52 week average was up marginally to 37.1 incidents per week.

Our publication of Naturgas press releases and their criticism of statements by Santiago Urdinola, VP of Mining, Hydrocarbons and Energy at business persons’ association ANDI has sparked a reply from the ANDI. It seems the statement about potential gas shortages in 2019 were in fact based on well-informed study, in particular scenarios developed by the UPME, a MinMinas research institute on energy issues. We publish in full their letter to us and finish with our commentary.

National business newspaper Portafolio says Ronald Pantin, Pacific Rubiales CEO, announced that the company created a subsidiary to manage the infrastructure and transportation of hydrocarbons. According to Pantin, this measure will give visibility to US$2B that currently are not valued by the market and are invested in the Llanos Pipeline, the Bicentennial Pipeline, shares of the Petroeléctrica de los Llanos Company, the Cartagena Pipeline and the Puerto Bahia project.

GasSantiago Urdinola must wish he had never got out of bed the day he told a public audience that the country could face rationing as early as 2019. Since then fire and brimstone have rained down from the office of the natural gas industry association Naturgas.

Business magazine Dinero reported that the Dian penalized the oil company CECSA, a Canacol subsidiary, by closing of the CECSA offices from April 26 until April 29. The cause was an error in CECSA’s crude oil sales invoices. The error happened in 2008 and there was no tax evasion, which is why the Dian did not impose any fines on the company.

This the longer version of the ANDIs study on gas supply. From an ANDI press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

Oil gets much of the attention but from a domestic politics point of view, gas is perhaps more important. The government has been pushing development of gas as a substitute for dirtier fuels and as part of an integrated strategy for electrical generation. From a MinMinas press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

This week the forum on political participation organized by the United Nations Office on Colombia and the Colombian National University Think Tank for Peace took place. The purpose of the forum was to create a space for participation in which citizens were invited to express their views on the peace process.

Here we define a new set of stock price indices – Exploration Exposed and Production Exposed – where we exclude companies for which Colombia is only a minor part of their business (like Oxy or Petrobras).